BOSTON, Massachusetts, USA — Saturday, March 22nd, 2014 — Free
Software Foundation president Richard M. Stallman announced the
winners of the FSF's annual Free Software Awards at a ceremony on
Saturday, March 22nd, held during the LibrePlanet 2014 conference
at MIT, in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Two awards were given: the
Award for the Advancement of Free Software, and the Award for
Projects of Social Benefit.

The Award for the Advancement of Free Software is given
annually to an individual who has made a great contribution to
the progress and development of free software, through activities
that accord with the spirit of free software.

One of Garrett's nominators said, "Matthew spent considerable
efforts helping free software operating systems cope with the
UEFI 'Secure Boot' debacle. He has also enhanced the UEFI
support in those systems, both to fix bugs and to work around
bugs in UEFI firmware. Matthew has led the charge to develop
tools that allow users to make use of 'Secure Boot' themselves,
installing their own keys and signing their own code. Finally,
Matthew works with the industry organizations and companies who
maintain UEFI to ensure that those standards can support free
software. Even today, despite no longer working for a company
that requires his work in that area, he continues to serve as a
UEFI expert and debugger in his spare time."

Garrett said, "Free software has been a part of my life since I
was a teenager. Growing up in an area with little interest in
computing and limited internet access, having the freedom to
examine and modify the source code to software was an important
part of learning the skills I rely on today. Everyone deserves
to be able to exercise the same freedoms that I benefited from,
and I will continue to advocate for solutions that allow them to
do so without compromising the security that recent events
demonstrate is sorely required."

The Award for Projects of Social Benefit is presented to a
project or team responsible for applying free software, or the
ideas of the free software movement, in a project that
intentionally and significantly benefits society in other aspects
of life. This award stresses the use of free software in the
service of humanity.

GNOME OPW winning the Award for Projects of Social Benefit

This year, the award went to the GNOME Foundation's Outreach
Program for Women (OPW), which helps women (cis and trans)
and genderqueer people get involved in free software
development. OPW provides a supportive community for beginning to
contribute throughout the year and offers focused internship
opportunities twice a year with a number of free software
organizations. Since 2010, OPW has provided 130 women with an
opportunity to participate in paid remote internships with 23
free software organizations like Wikimedia, GNU MediaGoblin, and
last year's winner, OpenMRS. OPW's work benefits society more
broadly, addressing gender discrimination by empowering women to
develop leadership and development skills in a society which runs
on technology. OPW does this critical work using the ideals and
collaborative culture of the free software movement.

One nomination for the program read, "[OPW] brings women into the
free software movement who might otherwise not have become
involved, either because they believed that they weren't welcome
or that free software was just a 'boy's club.' Given the current
number of women in the movement (approximately 2-5%), this
project is introducing free software to a largely unreached
population -- the world's women. "

Karen Sandler and Marina Zhurakhinskaya, co-organizers of OPW,
were present to accept the award on behalf of OPW.

Zhurakhinskaya, a GNOME Foundation director and community
engagement lead at Red Hat, which partners with GNOME to organize
OPW, said, "We're honored to receive this award on behalf of the
GNOME Foundation and proud that the FSF recognizes the importance
of taking action to include more women."

Sandler, the GNOME Foundation's executive director, said, "We
hope that this recognition inspires everyone to think about how
to improve diversity in free software. We'd love it if you'd
apply to participate, spread the word about the program, consider
joining as an organization, or ask your company to sponsor."

About the Free Software Foundation

The Free Software Foundation, founded in 1985, is dedicated to
promoting computer users' right to use, study, copy, modify, and
redistribute computer programs. The FSF promotes the development
and use of free (as in freedom) software -- particularly the GNU
operating system and its GNU/Linux variants -- and free
documentation for free software. The FSF also helps to spread
awareness of the ethical and political issues of freedom in the
use of software, and its Web sites, located at fsf.org and
gnu.org, are an important source of information about
GNU/Linux. Donations to support the FSF's work can be made at
https://donate.fsf.org. Its headquarters are in Boston, MA, USA.